A Spear of Summer Grass

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “Typical clergyman,” he said lightly. “Would it suit you best if they were all speaking Latin and begging for the Host?”

  Mr. Halliwell’s gentle expression did not falter. “Not at all. I accept that not all of them will be saved, but I live in hope, Gervase. As I live in hope that you, too, will come into the fold.”

  Gervase rolled his eyes toward me. “Lawrence cannot bear having an atheist in the herd.”

  “On the contrary,” Halliwell returned quietly. “I consider you to be a testimony to God’s faith that whatever questions you might raise, I am sufficient to answer.”

  Bianca’s eyes flashed. “He does not require your answers.”

  “Now really, Bianca,” Miss Halliwell said, putting her fork down. “There’s no call to be rude just because Lawrence is doing his job.”

  “His job?” Bianca’s upper lip curled a bit. She wasn’t a particularly attractive woman, but she did scorn well.

  “Yes, his job,” Miss Halliwell said firmly. “And furthermore—”

  “Oh, will the lot of you shut up before you give me indigestion?” Sybil Balfour spoke up sharply. She reached down under the table and pulled out a tiffin box which she proceeded to fill with the contents of her dinner plate.

  “Sybil, darling, you do a better job at hostessing my parties than I do!” Helen said, almost sincerely. She looked to me. “Sybil has a frightful cook. He prepares everything out of tins and even then he’s a menace. How many times has he poisoned you now, Sybil?”

  “Seven,” the older woman put in promptly. She motioned to the doctor who reluctantly gave up half of his portion of duck for her tiffin box.

  “If he’s so awful, why do you keep him?” I asked.

  Sybil shrugged. “Obligation. I saved his life once. Nasty business with a snake. Anyway, he believes he’s indebted to me and won’t leave. He thinks he’s a fine cook, and I haven’t the heart to tell him otherwise. If it weren’t for the leftovers from Helen’s dinner parties, I’d never get a decent meal at Nyama.”

  I passed her my dinner roll for her tiffin box and she gave me a gruff nod.

  Dessert was a fig gratin, and with it came small glasses of Sauternes, the pale gold wine gleaming under the soft lights.

  “Château d’Yquem,” Helen said. “I ordered it when I thought Ryder might be coming, but he begged off. Always out adventuring, we never know if he’ll turn up or not. He sends his regards to everyone.”

  If anyone thought it strange that Ryder and Wickenden should be expected to meet socially so soon after the railway station thrashing, no one said a word. Wickenden went on quietly consuming his food, chewing quite slowly, perhaps because of the molar Ryder had knocked out. Only Sybil showed a reaction, a tiny smile she could not quite suppress. Jude looked as remote as ever, and I wondered if she was even grateful to Ryder for what he had done.

  “Probably out with the Kukes again,” the doctor put in.

  I looked up and Rex smiled at me. “Ryder is famous in these parts for his devotion to the native tribes. Although I think you’ve got it wrong there, Bunny. He’s a Masai man, through and through.”

  The doctor shrugged. “As if one needed to know the difference.”

  “I’m surprised anyone could confuse them,” I offered. “There are Kikuyu and Masai both at Fairlight and they don’t look at all alike, not really.” The Kikuyu were shorter, with rounder faces and limbs for the most part, while Gideon was tall and slender, his muscles long, his face fine-boned.

  “Perhaps not,” the doctor conceded, “but they are all troublesome devils.”

  I glanced about the table to find mixed reactions—boredom from the women, studied nonchalance from the men and a glimmer of warning from Dora not to start trouble. Kit alone was watching me with something like amused anticipation. It was the same expression I’d seen on my grandfather before he headed out to watch a cockfight.

  “If they’re troublesome perhaps it’s because white people brought the trouble to them.”

  Mr. Halliwell put down his fork. “An excellent point, Miss Drummond. Certainly the arrival of whites in the colony has changed the balance of power. But there were always conflicts, always warfare and bloodshed amongst these people. Why, even during our Great War, the Masai and the Bantu fought a vicious war that is still talked about. It is our duty to show them another way.”

  “Bloody nonsense,” the doctor said, raising his glass to drink deeply. It was his fourth and the more he drank the more his hands shook. I made a mental note to stay healthy while I was in Africa. There was no way I wanted those plump trembling hands anywhere near me. “They’ve no understanding and no capacity for understanding. The kindest thing is to keep them in a place where they can be watched over by those who know best and left to sort out their own troubles.” He turned to me with a sly look. “I think you Americans had the right idea putting your natives onto reservations. It’s worked out well enough for you lot, hasn’t it?”

  I ignored him and directed my attention to our host. “You’ve been here the longest, Rex. Do you agree that we have a moral duty to civilize the natives? Or do you think they ought to be pushed onto reservations?” I asked.

  He paused and when he spoke, his answer was thoughtfully crafted. “I think the question of duty is one for men in comfortable London meeting rooms to debate. Out here there is only the truth.”

  “And what is the truth?” I persisted.

  “That Africa is a hard place, a very hard place. But it is full of promise, a land of such immense beauty and possibility that every man is a new Adam. Those who have lived here for centuries have lived simply, too simply. The land is not managed, and because of this, disease and animals take their toll upon the population and poverty runs rampant. We can fix that and we must if the whites are to thrive here. We are the builders of empire, my dear. We bring roads and schools, medicine and good food. We have the power to save the lives of children and, if we’re lucky, to put a few pounds in the bank against a rainy day. We can make a better life for everyone in Africa, and we need not choose to be either saints or devils to do it,” he added, looking from the doctor to the missionary. “We are but men, the sons of Seth, inheritors of this vast new Eden, this little paradise.”

  It reeked of Shakespeare, but it was a good speech altogether. The doctor raised his glass high and shouted, “The sons of Seth!” slurring only slightly on the s’s.

  Everyone else joined in the toast, and when it was drunk, Helen waggled a flirtatious finger at her husband. “And don’t you leave us out, Rex. It’s not just the men who will make over Africa. We women have a role to play, too.”

  “Of course you do, my darling,” he said with a fond smile. “For without the inspiration of woman, what man has ever accomplished anything?”

  She simpered at this piece of gallantry and in the wake of it, I turned to Rex again.

  “Speaking of the role of women, I’d like to buy a milk cow.”

  He raised his brows. “Fancy starting your own dairy herd? Do you know anything about cattle?”

  I shrugged. “What’s to learn? They all have four legs and give milk and when they don’t you can shoot them and eat them for dinner.”

  Bianca gave a little scream and covered her mouth with her hands, but Jude Wickenden laughed aloud, the first sound I had heard out of her all evening.

  Rex smiled, his laugh lines creasing handsomely. “Dairy cattle take quite a bit more attention than beef cattle. I have an excellent book on starting a dairy herd if you’re interested, although I’d be more than happy to sell you as much milk as you could possibly need for your little household.”

  “Oh, it isn’t for us. It’s for the Kikuyu labourers.”

  The room went silent. Even the music from the gramophone seemed suddenly softer. Everyone’s eyes fixed on me, and I could have guessed wha
t they were thinking. Only the doctor dared say it aloud.

  “You’ll spoil those devils if you give them milk. They can get their own and if they can’t, well, it’s nature’s way, isn’t it? Culling the herd.”

  Rex ignored him. “In that case you’d be better off with a few head of native cattle. They’ll be more resistant to disease and the locals will like the milk better. It has a more pungent taste than what our European dairy cattle give. Take my advice and get a boy to tend them as well, preferably a Masai. I can arrange it with one of the natives if you like.”

  I don’t know what made me resist. It would have been simpler just to leave it in Rex’s hands. But before I could do the easy thing, my mouth interrupted. “Thank you, but I think I’ll try it on my own first.”

  Anthony Wickenden snorted into his glass, and Sybil Balfour shot him an evil look.

  “Glad to hear it,” she boomed at me from her end of the table. “Too many women come out here and forget they’ve got brains of their own.” She looked from Bianca to Helen, and the latter gave a bright peal of laughter.

  “Guilty as charged, Sybil. I don’t do anything but set a nice table and make sure the guest room is made up for travellers.”

  “I know precisely what you do,” Sybil shot back, and I saw that Rex was watching them both closely.

  “I am practicing my hostessing for when I’m first lady of Kenya,” Helen said, wrinkling her nose at Sybil.

  I looked at Rex. “Do you have aspirations to be governor?”

  “Governor!” It was Anthony Wickenden, talking with a little difficulty through his swollen lips. They seemed to have stiffened up during the meal. “He means to be president.”

  I looked curiously at her, but Rex merely waved a hand. “Helen, I think it’s time to cut Anthony off,” he said with a twinkle. He turned to me. “Our great hope is that London will extend to Kenya the same status it has conferred upon Rhodesia—that of a free nation.”

  “I heard some talk about that as I was coming in. Isn’t that why Governor Kendall is in England right now?”

  Rex nodded. “Yes, pleading our case before the Parliamentary committee. We are every bit as educated and devoted to Africa as the landowners in Rhodesia, and we fought just as hard in the Great War to support the mother country. We deserve our shot at self-determination.”

  “It sounds like a reasonable enough request. Will they grant it?”

  “They are politicians,” Gervase said bitterly. “When were politicians ever reasonable?”

  Rex was more generous. “Now, Gervase, that isn’t entirely fair. They listened to the Rhodesians and they responded. We can only hope they do the same for us.”

  “They might if it weren’t for the bloody Indians,” the doctor interjected.

  Yet again I ignored him and turned to Rex as he explained. “What the doctor means is that during the Great War, India supported England, as you must know.” He hesitated, touching only lightly on my own involvement in that terrible time. “There are a great many Indians here, running shops, building railways. They are almost all merchants or labourers. But they want to own land, and under the current laws they cannot. India is pushing the government in London to grant them ownership rights and to keep Kenya as a crown colony. Naturally, we oppose this.”

  I remembered what the ship’s captain had told me as we approached the teeming harbor at Mombasa. “But if they are business owners surely—”

  I hadn’t even finished before the doctor cut me off. “One cannot expect an American to be sensible about these things!”

  “Yes, we know nothing about colonies and revolution,” I said sweetly.

  Rex threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Hoist with your own petard, Bunny.” He covered my hand lightly with his own. “I’m glad you’re taking an interest in what will become of us. I know you don’t mean to stay forever, but I do hope we will have the pleasure of your company for some time to come.”

  He removed his hand then, but the warmth of it lingered on my skin and when I looked up, Helen was regarding me thoughtfully.

  Kit rose then and lifted his glass. “To both of our enchanting new additions,” he said, graciously including Dora in his salute. The rest of the company joined in and Dora and I clinked glasses merrily across the table. I sipped deeply from the Sauternes, thinking that if Rex could run a country as well as he could stock a wine cellar, Kenya wouldn’t have a thing to worry about.

  Rex rose. “And another toast, to Bianca and Gervase, who are leaving us tomorrow. Safe journey, my friends.”

  Everyone drank, and I turned to the Pembertons. “Where are you bound? Safari?”

  Bianca’s only reply was another curl of her lip, but Gervase was more forthcoming.

  “We’re going down to the coast. Our place is farthest up the valley, and the altitude isn’t good for Bianca’s blood pressure. Once a year we take a rest and go down to sea level.”

  “Ryder has a house in Lamu,” Helen put in. “It’s a divine old ruin, once the palace of an Arab slave trader! It’s terribly haunted by ghosts and djinns and that sort of thing, but it’s perched on the loveliest spot overlooking the ocean. It makes for a wonderful escape, and Ryder is a dear about loaning the place to any of his friends desperate to get down to sea level.”

  “He must be a popular fellow,” I said mildly.

  Helen gave a peal of laughter. “Oh, my dear, he’s legend! If you’d stayed in Nairobi any longer you’d have heard some of the stories.”

  “Most of them far too scandalous for a respectable dinner table,” Miss Halliwell put in, her lips prim.

  “Oh, he isn’t as bad as all that,” Helen said, flapping a hand at her. “He’s just high-spirited. For instance,” she said, turning her attention to me, “every year at Christmas everyone gathers at the club. It’s a wonderful time, so many people from all over the colony meeting up with old friends, the parties, the dances! Well, at one of the formal dinners, everyone was having a marvelous time when all of a sudden, the club steward comes in shrieking something about a lion out in the street.”

  I lifted a brow. “A lion. In Nairobi?” I glanced around the table, but Rex was nodding.

  “There was. A young male. Nasty piece of work, too.”

  Helen picked up the tale, breathless and wide-eyed. “Well, everyone was so stunned, they just sat like statues, they simply couldn’t move! But not Ryder. He got up and walked straight to the nearest gun rack, took down a rifle and strode right into the street and shot that lion dead!”

  Rex leaned near. “The story made it as far as the English papers because he was wearing full evening dress at the time.”

  I gave him a little push. “Now I know you’re teasing.”

  “Not at all,” he protested. “I’ll dig the clipping out after dinner.”

  Good as his word, after we’d adjourned to the drawing room for a little dancing to the gramophone, Rex appeared at my elbow with an album, a sort of scrapbook of the colony. There were pages devoted to the races and the Christmas festivities in Nairobi with photographs of smiling people and newspaper clippings detailing the silly pranks they played on one another, some of them straight out of the schoolroom. But here and there were other clippings, sober reminders of lives lost too early, death notices and mentions of accidents and misfortunes.

  “A hard place, your Africa,” I said softly.

  Rex gave me a gentle smile. “But worth every life it takes, and so many more.”

  “You really love it here, don’t you?”

  The elegant silvering brows rose. “Of course. I know you don’t understand that yet. How could you? Africa is brutal, but you will come to love her, in spite of the brutality. Perhaps even because of it.”

  He turned the page then and pulled out a loose clipping. He handed it to me with a smile. There were
two photographs with the article. One featured the lion, stretched out on the bar of the Norfolk Hotel, dripping blood onto the polished wood. Everyone was packed around it in their evening finery, raising glasses in a toast to the narrow escape they’d had. Only Ryder was absent. The second photo was of him on his own. He was wearing his evening clothes, and was only half-turned towards the camera, as if someone had called his name and he had lifted his head in response.

  “He wouldn’t let them photograph him with the lion,” Rex told me. “Thought it was all the most awful palaver. I don’t even think he kept the claws off that one.”

  “The claws?”

  “Oh, yes. Bit of a tradition of his. Every big cat he takes, lion or leopard, he takes a claw or tooth to put onto a bracelet he wears. Not as a trophy, mind you. He says it’s to remind him that every life out here counts for something and shouldn’t be forgot. Oh, dear. Bunny seems to have found the single malt. Do excuse me.”

  He took the album with him but the clipping was still in my hand. I looked down at the photographs, the laughing, lively faces crowded around the atrocity of the dead lion. There was something faintly obscene about it, and I was absurdly glad that Ryder hadn’t been a part of it. Then I thought of the bracelet he wore, each tooth or claw representing a different animal he had killed, and I shivered a little.

  “What’s the matter? Goose walk over your grave?” Kit’s voice was warm in my ear.

  “You try wearing a backless evening gown,” I said, turning quickly. “You’d shiver, too.” I dropped the clipping to the table behind me and tucked my arm into his. “Come dance with me. I seem to remember your form is as good on the dance floor as it is in other places.”

  He laughed and swung me into his arms.

  10

  The next morning Dora hunted me down when I was having a bath to talk about the house.

  “It’s really in deplorable shape,” she said, arranging my toilet articles on a tray and primly averting her eyes as I soaped up. “Most of the books are riddled with worms, there are moths in the upholstery and white ants seem to be devouring the wallpaper.”